Her mother keeps praying, but her aunt ceases her idle chatter and says, “What? What do you see?”
Hannah tries to describe it. Up the river, north of downtown, in the Pearl District, something binds the earth and sky, a thick black pillar. Like an unlit skyscraper. Or a massive spotlight, except one that specially casts darkness.
Lela leans over the wheel and squints. “I don’t see anything.”
“It’s like before,” Hannah says. “Like in the woods,” and only then does her mother stop praying.
?
Ten minutes later, they find a parking spot and walk two blocks. Or maybe walk is the wrong word. Hannah stumbles, resting often against garbage cans, light poles, her mother. The night air feels good at first, but then it begins to seep into her and she shivers. Her mother takes off her cardigan and wraps it around Hannah like a bandage. They stop before a building tucked between buildings. Its sign reads: THE WEARY TRAVELER, ALL ARE WELCOME.
Through the glass Hannah can see a lit cross hanging above the reception desk. She’s still making sense of colors, but she pegs the glow of the cross as somewhere between ice blue and dying lilac. The lights inside are dim otherwise. Lela tries the door and finds it locked. She raps her knuckles on the glass. Waits a few seconds. Then starts pounding with the meat of her fist.
“What are we doing here?” Cheryl says, and Lela says, “Just trust me, okay?”
A minute later the door opens and a man stands in the crack of it, studying them. His forehead juts out and throws a shadow over his eyes. His shoulders are so muscular they seem to round out of his neck. One of his arms is mummied in bandages. He looks like a caveman in flannel and denim. But his voice is gentle. “What do you want now?” he says to Lela.
“Shelter. Like the sign says.”
He touches his bandaged arm then, as if reminded of the pain. “Whatever article you’re working on, I’m not interested in helping.”
“I’m not here for an article. I’m here for help.”
“I’m sorry,” he says, and starts to close the door.
Hannah feels heavier by the second. Like a darkness is pooling inside her, weighing her down. Something gives. Her ankles, then her knees, her hips, a slow and total collapse. Her mother tries to catch her, but Hannah slips through her scrabbling hands and slumps to a rest on the concrete stoop.
Their voices sound farther away than their faces. They kneel beside her and touch her face and pet her hair and ask her if she’s all right. She tries to say, “Clearly,” but can’t find the breath.
She is vaguely aware of cool air on her belly. Her aunt has lifted her shirt. She is showing the man something. The bite marks. The scratch marks. The hot streaks that offset her otherwise marble-cool skin. “You see this?” she says, yelling now. “We need your help. You need another reason? Because if you need one, I could tell you the story about the guy who broke into her house and crumbled into a pile of ash that looked a lot like the one on your kitchen floor.”
Only then does the man nod. His body is so big that it seems to take him a long time to lean down, to scoop Hannah up in his arms. She has never felt so small.
?
Inside, he cradles her with one arm and uses the other to swipe a tablet that hangs near the door. He engages a security code. Locks slam into place. An alarm chirps once to confirm the seal. In this building, with this man, for the first time since the restaurant, she feels safe. He smells like leather and straw. “This way,” he says, and leads them down a hallway and into the dining room that runs up against the kitchen. He sets Hannah on one of the tables, and she nearly blacks out from exhaustion.
She isn’t sure how long she lies there. Voices fade and bodies slide in and out of view. Sometimes she is awake and sometimes asleep. Every part of her aches. Even the tips of her fingers. It is a poisoned feeling, a rotten feeling, as if her skin sleeved over a black and gelatinous core.
She hears something. A busy sound. The air wing-beaten with whispers. They’re talking about her, she realizes. The voices overlap, like wind currents wrestling for control of the air, shrill and deep, calm and questioning.
It’s then that a face swings into view. A woman. Not her mother and not her aunt. Silver-haired except for a long black stripe running back from her temple. She’s a tired kind of pretty. Her skin drooping and puffing off her face. Her breath smells like menthol cigarettes when she says, “She’s got a hitchhiker.”
“What are you talking about?” Her mother’s voice. Sounding far away, underwater. “What do you mean by hitchhiker?”
The woman doesn’t answer, so the big man does. “Somebody’s put a mark on her. Something’s taken an interest in her,” he says. “Jumped on her back, so to speak.”
Hannah’s mother always said you can tell a woman’s true age by looking at her neck. This woman’s is long and wrinkled and wired with ligaments that rise from the sharp anchor of her collarbone. Her leather jacket hides how thin she is. She wears something else. A redness that surrounds her. Like a fiery cloak. Edged with yellow and black. It ripples from her body and gives off heat when she leans in.
“You see me, don’t you?” she says. “You see me as I am?”
When Hannah doesn’t respond, the woman says, “You’re like me, aren’t you?”
Hannah tries to flinch away, to say, “No!” but the woman takes hold of her face and says, “Don’t be stupid. I’m trying to help.” Then their mouths come together in what might look like a kiss, but is more a joining of breath.
Hannah sees then. In a rush, she sees everything about this woman. The experience is like falling through a vast house tipped on its side, doorway after doorway, room after room, window after window, crowded with so many views of a life.